Hi,

I'm looking for price info on the Blackbird engine for a future billed.
Has anyone bought one already created up from a company like 'two to four engineering 'or similar.

Hi fuzzy : blackbird engine has always been a popular choice, about 160 bhp puts it between the fireblade/R1 130/145bhp and the busa 180bhp .
due to this you tend to find they are more expensive to buy than the blade/R1.
I bought my engine a 929cc injection blade engine,2001 from PITSTOP 90 ,who addvertise in which kit,01773 512333 and found them to be very good, you dont get the engine created,they are more a bike breakers,my engine cost £1500 with all running gear & only 3000 miles,you see them remove the engine from the bike so you no what your getting.
Ive also been back since for a few bits & bobs and they have given them to me F.O.C

Got to say I also got my blade engine from Pitstop 90 and found them to be very helpful.

They also know alot about the bikes and race them and were more than happy to chat for a long time about installing one in a kit car and I am sure they also supply blackbird engines aswell.

Definitely worth giving them a call.

Rich.

Thanks for that, I'll give em a ring tommorrow. The reason I was thinking about the blackbird engine was the extra torque over the blade for easier road use.
How does your blades drive in traffic?

Bear in mind that if you're going anywhere near a track with a Blackbird mounted longitudinally in a BEC then you'll need to dry sump it

Chris

I'm pricing up 2 options at the moment but plan to go for a rear engine chain driven option. I so the MK GT-R at Newark and will see how that developes. At the other end of the scale I thought about having a look at the Sylva Mojo. The engine would be mounted as in a bike. Would the engine still need to be dry sumped?

the link that was posted on here not long back cant remember which breakers it was too, but a search would find it, anyhow they had two Blackbird engines at £1100 each..........

Chris, dry sump is good but theres an Blackbird front mounted running in the RGB with accusump ok at the mo.....

I thought DanB was the only one who ran a front engine'd 'bird in RGB?
From Dan's failures and other trackday car failures which some IIRC had Accusumps (some of the F27's tried em I think), personally Id still be inclined to fully dry sump it I think although Im sure an Accusump could be made to work reliably.

Chris

[Edited on 13/7/04 by ChrisGamlin]

(I've never been inside a Blade or BB engine) ....you could install a pivotting pick-up. (swings to the outside of a turn)

The accusump is my best bet. Oversize it if you have room, and go for the option with the low-pressure switch.

Honestly I've seen the swinging pick-up used successfully on some road course cars here in the states. Mainly low budget operations.

Its a neat idea but I dont think you'd have room inside a blade / bird sump, you'd probably better off baffling it etc to try to aim as much of the returning oil towards the pickup as poss.
One thing that always worries me with the Accusump is what happens when you pull up to a stop and the engine goes to idle / low pressure, surely at that point you dont want it dumping a sumpful of oil into the engine (or is that what this low pressure switch does?)

depending on how the pressure switch is set up, it can even hold the oil after shut-down, to pre-oil before the next start.

The switch is adjusted to set a minimum oil pressure.

Hmm, but for example the hot idle pressure on my engine gets down to under 1 bar, so if an accusump was set up to still hold oil at that pressure and the engine had oil surge at max revs, by the time its got low enough to pump in the oil, its possibly going to be too late to prevent damage anyway.

Chris

Baffles are said to be effective for road use, so how much time is spent at hot idle on the track?

If the unit discharges at a traffic light it still should fill quickly after you start back.

Accusump has a racing version that has a fast recovery valve design.

I honestly believe that between sump/pick-up mods, and installation of an accusump, that oil surge should be all but eliminated.

Many race modded V8s here have the oil pans widened at the bottom with trap doors installed to keep oil in the pick-up are during hard cornering.

I must admit that Ive not fully looked into Accusumps so some of my assumptions may be wrong, but personally Im not convinced the way they work is a good thing for the engine at times other than when you actually get surge. For example Im not sure its good for an engine to have a sudden overfill of oil at any point when its running, if it dumps in its oil at idle or when you come in after a session etc, then its suddenly going to have shed loads more oil in the sump than its designed to cope with. Also could this oil theoretically be cold, as if the Accusump primes when you start the engine, and it doesnt discharge until you have surge or come off track afterwards, would you not be pumping in stone cold oil into a hot highly stressed engine?

The other thing Im unsure about the Accusump is that, say for example I go round a corner on track and suffer surge, so the Accusump goes off and pumps in extra oil for me, then I go blatting off up the track at 12k rpm at full throttle. At this point its critical that the engine gets good oil pressure because its at high load, yet the Accusump is going to be making demands of the oil pump at the same time to also replenish its stock of oil, so could in theory reduce the oil pressure in the engine until it is replenished. Obviously the oil pumps have some capacity in reserve, but I don't see engine specific Accusumps designed for each specific oil pump so my guess is that this isnt taken into account in the design.

Chris

i'l let you know how i get on with it once i get the body sorted, i'm a bit more confident than you though at the mo chris..........

I noticed that the Blade sump, is very narrow. Obviously not meant for cornering forces. If the sump were widened when chopped, then the usual baffles added, I think the normal sump might be better able to deal with lateral G forces.

The factory design, when shortened, and installed in a car, is going to have a bad tendency to have oil climb into the crank when under hard acceleration. Sloped baffles or trap doors, would let the oil drain back freely during straight runs, but keep the oil from climbing in corners. The addition of width to the sumop would give additiolan oil volume to better cool and keep the engine lubed during high G operation.

The blade doesnt really suffer from oil surge, although it undoubtedly isnt ideally designed. Its tricky (time consuming) to chop though, so if you're paying to get one done it would probably be almost as cheap to get a billet sump.
Here's my chopped sump though, which in conjunction with a baffle plate has proven fine for over 20 track days.



Jon - hope it all goes well and Im proved wrong

cheers

Chris

I was in the same predicament (only with a GSXR1000) and I just put my order in for a dry sump from Nova. I dont want to be driving around watching the oil pressure gauge all the time.

From what I have read over at dsr forums a baffled sump is at preferrable to an accusump - probably best to run both though.

[Edited on 19/7/04 by MarkClow]

[Edited on 19/7/04 by MarkClow]